Director of Engineering

WTW is seeking a hands-on, technically credible engineering leader to mature and scale engineering capability across ICT. This is not a traditional Director of Engineering role: there are no direct reports. Instead, it is a strategic, deeply technical role focused on improving engineering consistency, software delivery maturity and effectiveness across five autonomous engineering stacks.

The stacks have been given autonomy to improve delivery velocity. The next phase retains that autonomy while introducing the right level of shared practice, tooling consistency and technical governance. Success depends on technical depth and the ability to build consensus — influencing engineering decisions through credibility and evidence rather than formal authority, and being willing to roll up sleeves and get into technical and code-level problems when it helps move things forward.

Location:

Reigate / Hybrid

Reports to:

Mark Mamone Peer relationships:  Head of Architecture, Platform & Engineering Enablement leadership, and Stack Engineering Leaders across ICTThe Role

Key Responsibilities Engineering practice & SDLC maturity: raise the quality and consistency of software design, development, testing and delivery; improve route-to-live, release management, quality gates and CI/CD; reduce manual effort where automation adds value.

Technical governance & consensus: provide constructive, hands-on challenge to engineering and architecture decisions; build alignment across stacks while respecting differing product, commercial and lifecycle needs; support pragmatic technical-debt strategies.

Tooling & developer experience: assess and improve developer experience; standardise and consolidate tooling where it creates clear value (including the move to Git Hub as a strategic platform).AI adoption across the SDLC: drive practical adoption of AI-enabled engineering across development, testing, review, documentation and support, aligned to governance and measurable outcomes.

Engineering metrics & insight: improve visibility of delivery health using frameworks such as DORA and the LinearB pilot; define WTW-specific “lighthouse metrics” that reflect real effectiveness, not activity.

Shared engineering capability: reduce duplication across stacks; promote reusable components, patterns and common engineering services where appropriate.

To offer technical guidance & advice when asked, based on their technical background and experience

Technology Environment The environment uses, or is moving towards: C#, .NET / .NET Core, Microsoft Azure, Git Hub (an increasingly strategic platform), Azure Dev Ops, CI/CD pipelines and automation, and engineering analytics tooling including the LinearB pilot. The candidate should understand these well enough to challenge, guide and directly contribute to engineering direction.

What Success Looks Like Greater consistency in engineering practice and stronger technical alignment across stacks.

Improved SDLC maturity, better CI/CD and reduced manual effort.

Better developer experience and pragmatic tooling standardisation where it adds value.

Clearer engineering metrics and improved visibility of delivery health.

Increased reuse of engineering capability and greater adoption of AI-enabled practices.

A healthy balance between stack autonomy and organisational consistency.

What you’ll bring This role suits a technical CTO-style leader who succeeds through credibility, judgement, leadership and consensus (where possible) rather than line authority — and who stays close enough to the code to challenge, guide and, when needed, get directly involved in solving technical problems.

Strong technical depth: able to easily hold their own with Stack Engineering Leaders and dive into architecture, code and delivery detail when it adds value.

A natural consensus-builder: challenges decisions constructively, aligns strong personalities, and creates momentum without unnecessary friction.

An excellent communicator who can simplify complex engineering topics for any audience.

Outcome-focused, pragmatic and comfortable balancing consistency with stack autonomy.

Essential technical experience across several of: modern software…